


Sanguine

by Sapphylicious



Category: Hakuouki
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 12:39:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphylicious/pseuds/Sapphylicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite the resemblance, the ochimizu wasn't actually blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanguine

It looked like blood.

That was the thought that had crossed Okita's mind the first time he'd laid eyes on Dr. Yukimura's so-called elixir from the West. The crimson liquid swimming inside the glass vial was a familiar, yet foreign sight. For most people, blood belonged in bodies. The rivers of it flowing inside them were invisible and rarely acknowledged, easily forgotten, tucked away safe and hidden from the naked eye.

For swordsman, the matter was different. Blood was meant to be spilled. Skin was thin and fragile, making a laughable barrier for housing a body's dense package of meat. A sharp sword could cut through most of it with no trouble at all, slicing soft organs, severing tougher muscles, even breaking thick bones. The concealed rivers of blood could turn inside out with one swing. There was no place blood couldn't go; it ran and smeared on Okita's blade, spattered and stained on his clothes, pooled and sank into the ground.

With that in mind, he supposed bottling it up would be a fair, albeit peculiar practice.

His thoughts were wandering – Okita brought them back to the small vial in his hand. Despite the resemblance, the ochimizu wasn't actually blood. It didn't act like blood. The liquid always remained smooth and watery, slip-sliding around as he rotated the glass, never sticking or thickening in lumps. He guessed it wouldn't dry or flake, either.

"Please be careful with that," said Sannan, barely glancing his way. The man was seated at his desk where other similar vials and a sheaf of notes were spread out before him. Though they'd had a measure of success with Sannan's version of the doctor's potion, he still spent a great deal of time refining it. "Furthermore, Okita-kun, shouldn't you be resting?"

"I rested all day," he said in automatic reply. There was no real protest in his words, just as there was no real reproach in Sannan's polite question. As for being careful, more lip service, not even worth acknowledging. Okita held the vial up to the candlelight and gazed at the flickering flame through the translucent liquid. Everything the ochimizu touched was dyed red.

"Very well. You know your body best."

"You're not going to tell on me, are you?" Okita looked away from the vial to grin lazily at Sannan's back.

"Are you a child in need of supervision?" There was a pause where Okita's grin slipped. Then Sannan continued, his back still turned all the while, "You may do as you wish."

_As usual_ , Okita thought. _There's just no telling with Sannan-san._

He uncapped the vial with a quiet clink of glass. Sannan didn't so much as twitch. If Hijikata knew he was playing with this stuff… Well, what the Demon Commander didn't know couldn't hurt him, and it would certainly save Okita from a lecture. He held the opening under his nose and took a curious sniff.

It didn't smell like blood – in fact it barely had any scent at all. There was something medicinal about it, but that would make sense, given that it was created as a remedy. There was plenty of evidence to support its curative properties. Okita had seen wounds close before his very eyes. He'd seen Sannan take up a sword again, stronger than ever before (at least under the cover of night).

Okita gripped the vial tightly, stopping just short of shattering the glass. There was strength enough in him to do that with ease. There was strength enough for him to hold his sword, to fight, to spill the blood of his enemies – for now. Until too much of his own blood was forced out of him, whether by someone else's blade or his own traitorous body. It was the latter that made his stomach clench, his fist squeezing a little more. Blood on his hands, he was used to that, but not his own blood. Not when it also flecked his lips and coated his throat all the way down, tasting it heavy and bitter with no blade in sight.

He forced himself to loosen his hold on the bottle and cap it again, firmly, and was about to rid himself of the damningly red concoction when Sannan's words halted him.

"Why don't you keep that?"

"…Ah?" Okita let out a sharp, brittle laugh. His eyes, like his smile, were narrow. "That's generous of you. What would I do with it, though? I don't need a souvenir."

"Well, that's for you to decide, isn't it?" Sannan finally turned around to fix him with a placid smile. "By the way, I never did thank you."

Okita set the bottle down in front of him, not entirely sure he wanted to accept it, and he felt better having his hands free when the air changed so. "Thank me for what?"

"For not killing me. I made the request fearing that I had failed, and I knew that you, Okita-kun, could be trusted with the task."

"…I see. Were you disappointed that I didn't?"

"Not at all. That is why I must thank you. I've been given a new life, or a second chance, if you will. There is much more I can accomplish now."

"Heh, no need to thank me for that." Okita recalled the anguished, half-crazed expression on Sannan's face from that time, red eyes glowing behind a shock of white hair. The rasetsu were to be pitied, that's what Okita had always said. That's what he'd been thinking when he drew his sword against his comrade. "Anyway, you healed pretty fast. Hard to kill when you're like that."

Sannan lightly touched the spot on his chest where Okita's sword had pierced him. "Difficult, yes, but not impossible. Especially not for a talented swordsman." His fingers made a hairsbreadth adjustment to linger over his heart.

Okita's lips quirked into a knowing grin. "Aw, Sannan-san, such flattery. Maybe my hand slipped."

"I suppose such a thing is possible." That was as far as Sannan was willing to humor him. "Regardless of whether it was by accident or design, the fact is that I am alive right now."

"So you're happy like this, huh?"

"'Happy'..." Sannan repeated the word as if it amused him. For a moment he and Okita wore matching sardonic expressions. "I can be of use again, and that is more than enough."

Okita looked away first. "Yeah, that's true." Useful only as a dead man, condemned to exist in the shadows with other ghouls for company. They were a pathetic lot...

Yet they could be counted on to still be able to lift their swords. Okita sent a sideways glance in Sannan's direction. If Sannan the rasetsu was truly pitiable, he didn't seem to care. He had what he wanted: life, opportunity, capability. He had more than he would have without the ochimizu.

Okita was captain of the Shinsengumi 1st Division. Blood belonged on his blade as surely as the paired swords belonged at his waist. All he needed to that effect was a body that could fight. 

"Say, Sannan-san..." He picked up the vial again and turned it around in his hands, considering. Bottled blood. Bottled life.

"Yes?"

He gave the vial and its contents a ponderous swirl. "What did this stuff taste like? It sure looks unpleasant." The question was accompanied by a likewise unpleasant grin.

Okita enjoyed the rare sight of Sannan looking nonplussed. Then the man let out a faint sigh, giving the slightest shake of his head. If he was anyone else his eyes might have rolled heavenward with exasperation. "I'm afraid I don't quite recall. I was a bit preoccupied at the time, you understand, but it's true that the formula doesn't take into account palatability. Given the ingredients, your assumption is most likely correct."

A bitter draught, then. Of course it would have to be. Okita dragged his eyes away from the ochimizu and nonchalantly pocketed the vial in his left sleeve. A gift was a gift, however dubious. Resigned, he said, "Well, thanks for the souvenir. I suppose I'll go tuck myself back in so Hijikata-san won't cluck at me."

Sannan's expression was smooth once more, wearing a serene smile that did much to veil his thoughts if Okita pretended not to know better. "You're welcome. Goodnight, Okita-kun."

"'Night."

He stepped outside where the heat of summer still lingered in the air even with the sun long gone below the horizon. The Nishi Honganji grounds were noticeably quieter than they were during the day, and Okita was as silent as a ghost passing along the verandah. There were other ghosts, too, that roamed the corridors in the dead of night, though he came across none. They stalked the streets as well, orderly enough in their designated groups until roused by blood. Perhaps they'd become a bit better behaved since Sannan joined them, but only just – his persistent research and refinement of the ochimizu was testament to that.

The vial secreted away in Okita's sleeve weighed almost nothing, but its presence irritated him just a little, like an itch. He studiously ignored it for several heartbeats, then fished it out to hold under the light of the moon. The glass gleamed silver, and the liquid inside glared crimson.

"What an evil-looking thing," he mused aloud. His hand and voice were steady, unperturbed by the strangeness of what he held. Then, with a dry chuckle, he raised the glass higher to peer through it like a lens.

The midnight sky plunged into a sea of red. The distant lights of the stars weren't completely doused, but their steady, shining points had dimmed to elusive flickers struggling to be seen. Or maybe to hide, for poised among them was a bloody crescent moon, sharp as a blade striking the heavens.

Okita stood mesmerized by the picture for a long moment. He had a habit of watching the sky in all its mutable forms, but this was entirely new. Apparently he could still be surprised by the places blood could reach, and he smothered a laugh as he continued on to his room with the image trailing persistently in his thoughts. It clouded around him as he slept, but thinned and dispersed by morning. Daylight brought the touch of the sun on his face and the welcome of warmth on his skin, all beneath a vast field of blue sweeping immaculately overhead.

Still, he found himself staring harder and longer at common sights; the dusty streets of Kyoto crowded with people, the training grounds filled with noise in the heat of practice, the untroubled faces of his companions at mealtime. These images also sank into his memory and stayed there, and Okita smiled into his cup of sake.

"Souji, here."

The curt words carried a hard tone of command, and the sake went tasteless in his mouth. _Really_ , Okita thought, raising his eyes to meet Hijikata's predictable frown and furrowed brow, _you'd think he was born to order people around._ He'd certainly picked it up fast enough. It surprised others when they learned the Shinsengumi commander was the youngest son of his family, the leadership came so naturally to him. But that was Hijikata for you, ever so talented. Okita summon a wry grin. "Yes, yes." He accepted the familiar packet of medicine and made a shooing motion. Some people had to make do with what they had, and Okita had it in him to be petty and irritating.

Hijikata snorted, but left him to his games. That annoyed Okita as well, but he was accustomed.

The meal went as it always did with the usual suspects causing a ruckus and Hijikata growling at them for it. Saitou and Chizuru carried on a conversation in the midst of the fuss, the former calm as you please while the latter cast worried glances at the others. Her eyes flew wide at one particularly loud altercation that nearly bowled Heisuke over. Okita laughed merrily all the while, and dutifully swallowed his medicine when Kondou caught his eye.

The bitter taste went down his gullet to sit uselessly in his stomach, but Kondou's bright smile made up for it. "I'm fine," Okita said to the inquiry after his health. The words were rote by now; they no longer held any insistence the same way the medicine held no potency.

The sun closed upon another day, tinting the sky rose-colored in its wake.

"How pretty," Chizuru remarked, coming out of the kitchen from clean-up duty to catch the last fading wash of color seeping into the horizon.

Okita found it hard to look away from the dying light. "Do you like sunsets, Chizuru-chan?"

"Yes, they're very beautiful." There was a pause and he saw her glance at him in his peripheral vision. "They're like cherry blossoms… At least, I think so."

"Cherry blossoms, hm? I think you're right."

They passed the remainder of the time in silence. It didn't take long; sunsets were brief splashes of color, and Chizuru's comparison was apt. Night fell and she began to fidget, about to excuse herself. She froze when Okita's hand landed lightly upon her head.

"So that's that. It's good to appreciate them when they happen." He lifted his hand in a farewell as he turned, tossing back one more thing: "Besides, you never know, it might be the last. The world sure is a mysterious place."

"Eh?"

His shoulders shook with laughter as he left her to her bewilderment. Chizuru was too easy to tease sometimes, her reactions as fresh as they'd been when she first arrived. Living among men – especially men as rough and strange as they were – hadn't changed much about her. 

He'd fortunately turned a corner when the laugh caught in his throat. Okita braced one hand against the wall, the other clapped over his mouth to muffle the wet, ragged sounds being dragged from his chest. With the way each cough tore through, the warm, sticky splash into his palm came as no surprise, and he was so used to the metallic taste now it barely registered. 

When the spasms subsided he drew his hand away, breathing heavily, to stare at the rivulets trickling slowly between his fingers and down his wrist. Tucked as he was in the shadows of the temple, the color was closer to black than red, but red was what he saw. Red as the ochimizu hidden in his room, and red as the path he chose to walk. Red as the sanguine curve of his smile that trembled as he took a shuddering breath in the dark.

 

_You burn too bright_   
_You live too fast_   
_This can't go on too long_   
_You're a tragedy starting to happen_


End file.
